Star Odyssey

Chapter 1968: Absorption

Lu Yin suddenly stared at his cosmic ring, which held Zenith Mountain, which was where he had left Sapling.

Was it…? Was it really a Mother Tree?

Based on what Lu Yin had just heard from Leaf King, it did not seem impossible. When Lu Yin had Enhanced the stellular energy pill, it seemed highly likely that he had been improving or increasing the amount of the substance from the Mother Tree that had been present in the pill. Was Enhancing that substance what had caused Sapling to sprout?

"Is it difficult to extract this substance from the Mother Tree?" Lu Yin stared at Leaf King as he asked this question.

Leaf King let out a sigh of relief. Hearing this question from Lu Yin gave Leaf King a glimmer of hope that he could survive. His life held value. "I’ve been trying to do that for countless years, but there seems to be no way to do it other than to use my innate gift to absorb it.”

"I would even go so far as to say that if I die, there will be no one left in the entire universe who can extract that substance from the Mother Tree. There will be no one to help you obtain immortality, Lu Yin."

Leaf King focused on what he believed to be his greatest value to Lu Yin: his innate gift of absorption.

Lu Yin nodded. "I believe you. If it were possible to extract that substance through some other means, it would have already spread out a long time ago. In that case, show me just how valuable your innate gift of absorption really is."

Leaf King let out another sigh of relief. If Lu Yin was convinced, then he would not have to die. Thinking about this, Leaf King suddenly looked over at Yu Er, and his arm that had been removed suddenly twisted so that he could place a hand onto Yu Er's back, terrifying the girl. She shouted, "Alliance Leader Lu, help me!"

Lu Yin did not move. Leaf King had not struck the girl very hard, and it was clear that he was not trying to kill her, but rather showing the use of his innate gift of absorption.

As for Yu Er, Lu Yin had already heard about her from Yu Mu. The man might have been biased against the girl, but Lu Yin had also seen the girl not hesitated at all to betray Leaf King. She possessed no loyalty to anyone, so Lu Yin did not hesitate to use the offered opportunity to scare the girl.

Yu Er's face grew pale, and she crumpled to the ground. Leaf King's arm that had been sliced off then flew back to him, and his cracked body slightly recovered. "This is absorption. I just absorbed a bit of her vitality."

Lu Yin was surprised. "If there were enough people available, could you completely heal in one go?"

Leaf King shook his head. "It's not that easy, and most people can't endure the process. If she were an Envoy, I would be able to heal more from absorbing her vitality."

"So, does this mean that only you can extract the things that you have absorbed into your own body?" Lu Yin asked.

Leaf King agreed, "That's right. Anything that I extract can only be used by myself."

Lu Yin felt quite disappointed. "Get rid of him."

Leaf King was stunned. "Alliance Lea-"

The man did not even finish speaking before the Second Nightking’s attack was released. The old man did not hesitate, and a finger attack shot through Leaf King’s body, instantly killing him. At the same time, the massive tree that had trapped the Second Nightking was broken. Leaf King was completely dead.

Lu Yin sighed. If the man’s innate gift of absorption was not limited to benefiting himself, then Lu Yin could have borrowed it with his die’s Gift Copy. Leaf King would then not have been killed, but rather simply imprisoned on Zenith Mountain. However, since the innate gift could only be used by Leaf King himself, it held no value to Lu Yin.

Even if Sapling really was a sprout of the Mother Tree, it could not yet take root in the true universe and absorb the stellular energy there. Lu Yin had no idea how long the plant would need to accomplish that, but the materials that Lu Yin had received from Leaf King would not be enough to help Sapling grow to such an extent. Also, Lu Yin had no interest in trying to raise more sprouts like Sapling. This meant that there was only one option to nurture Sapling: have the little tree directly extract the substance from Leaf King's own body.

Lu Yin clearly remembered how Sapling had grown a noticeable amount after devouring a few stellular energy pills.

This thought encouraged Lu Yin to pull out Zenith Mountain and bring Sapling out, but before he proceeded, his Champions’ Stage reappeared. “By my name, I anoint a Champion."

After speaking those words, the image of Leaf King appeared on the Champions’ Stage. Lu Yin finally had a true powerhouse that he could summon.

Leaf King had possessed a power level on par with Liu Ye and Fei Hua’s, but Lu Yin was confident that neither of the two could stand up to Leaf King on their own.

When he saw the detailed image of Leaf King on his Champions’ Stage, Lu Yin stared at the stage for a long moment.

There were times when he considered the implications of a summoned champion. There were people who claimed that the Lu family’s anointment of champions was inhumane, and that the Champions’ Stage encouraged the Lu family members to kill their opponents in order to use them forever. This was a belief that had instigated a great deal of hatred against the family.

However, was this belief valid?

Lu Yin looked over at Leaf King's corpse. Even after Lu Yin had anointed the man as a new champion, nothing had changed about Leaf King’s body at all. None of the bodies of those anointed by a Champions’ Stage ever changed. A champion was not a corpse puppet, but rather a construct of energy. There was absolutely no flesh and blood to them at all. Lu Yin had thought about his champions many times, and he believed that the Lu family’s innate gift was something more like a duplication of a dead cultivator.

The Champions’ Stage seemed to act like a copy machine during a battle. Anyone who had been anointed by a Champions' Stage would have their actions, battle techniques, skills, innate gifts, and even secret techniques perfectly copied, and the champion would then be able to utilize those abilities when summoned.

The most convincing evidence was the fact that the summoned champions were never able to use battle techniques that the cultivators had not used during their lives. It was impossible for champions to learn anything new. The true function of the Champions’ Stage was a copier or a recorded copy of the past. The champions definitely were not slaves.

The reason why so many people hated and feared the Champions' Stage was because each anointed champion’s appearance would be perfectly duplicated. Who could endure the idea of their own parents, family, or clan members being enslaved? Even if what they were looking at was merely a copy and not a slave.

Lu Yin quickly dismissed his train of thought and brought Sapling out.

The moment Sapling was released, it looked around and found Lu Yin. The leaves started to happily dance about as Sapling jumped onto Lu Yin. Lu Yin let out a loud laugh. "Alright, enough playing. Check that out."

Leaf King was dead, while his body had been slightly dismembered, there was still no blood to be seen. Instead, his body looked more like a tree that had been torn apart.

Sapling’s leaves trembled, and it leaped over next to Leaf King's corpse and began circling the body. Eventually, a branch reached out and touched the corpse, and while no one could understand what Sapling did next, it started to grow at a visible rate.

The Second Nightking was startled, as this shattered his understanding of how the universe functioned.

Lu Yin was thrilled, as it was actually working. Leaf King had absorbed some sort of substance from the Mother Tree, and Sapling had sprouted from that very same substance. Naturally, Sapling was able to absorb the substance from Leaf King’s corpse.

That substance had finally returned to the Mother Tree, though it was not the same Mother Tree.

Inexplicably, Lu Yin started considering Leaf King's words. Just what kind of substance could grant immortality so easily? Regardless of how Leaf King’s body had transformed, the substance that he had absorbed had never altered even the slightest. No matter if it had been in his body, condensed into a stellular energy pill, or absorbed by Sapling, that particular substance had never changed at all.

Just what was it? Could the Mother Tree really live forever? If people managed to truly absorb that substance, would they also become immortal?

Lu Yin had to admit that he was somewhat moved by the thought, though he had no desire to become a tree.

He watched as Sapling grew more and more. It had already become dozens of feet tall, and yet it continued to grow even more.

Lu Yin glanced over at Balsam. "Just how big was Leaf King’s real body?"

Balsam's face was ashen as she stared at Leaf King's broken body. "Alliance Leader Lu, I pose no threat to you. Could you simply allow me to remain in this broken world to stand watch over Leaf King’s spirit?"

Lu Yin quietly turned to watch as Sapling grew larger and larger. He had no idea just how tall the tree would grow, but it had already stopped being cute and could be considered a true tree.

"If you allow me to do so, I can give you the resources that Shamrock Enterprise has gathered over the years. Leaf King normally did not wear a cosmic ring, and only he and I were aware of where he kept his wealth stored," Balsam continued.

Lu Yin finally looked over. "Are you threatening me?"

Balsam calmly replied, "I’m merely stating the truth."

It was clear that the woman’s heart was broken, and it was useless to threaten such a person.

Lu Yin thought for a while. "I can let you live as long as you don’t leave this hidden world."

Balsam was not surprised by this answer. After all, it was better for Lu Yin to obtain a vast amount of wealth rather than simply kill her. Anyone could easily understand that Shamrock Enterprise must have gathered a tremendous amount of wealth over the years, and their resources far surpassed what even the powers that ruled the Innerverse’s eight great flowzones had managed to gather.

After all, those other organizations were not businesses. Shamrock Enterprise’s pharmaceuticals were sold all across the entire Fifth Mainland, and while they might not be comparable to the Mavis Bank, the company was still absurdly wealthy.

Lu Yin was eager to obtain Shamrock Enterprise’s vast wealth, yet he continued to watch Sapling grow. Soon, Sapling had grown to match the full height of the hidden world, and yet, it continued to grow even further. Lu Yin started to worry that the hidden world might not be large enough to hold Sapling.

Fortunately, they soon saw that Sapling was able to control its size, as instead of growing larger, the tree started to shrink even though it was still absorbing more nutrients from Leaf King's body.

There was no telling just how much Leaf King had absorbed from the Mother Tree over the years.

The tree that Leaf King had brought out that had trapped the Second Nightking had truly been quite terrifying, but Lu Yin believed that Sapling would be capable of doing far more with the mysterious substance than anything Leaf King had ever managed.

In the end, Leaf King had been a human who had absorbed the substance and incorporated it into his body with his innate gift, while Sapling was a lifeform that had been formed from that substance.

Also, if Sapling was able to take root in the true universe and absorb stellular energy, did that mean that it would start to produce stellular energy liquid?

Lu Yin suddenly found himself short of breath as he finally felt like he was seeing a sliver of hope for cultivating and proceeding through the Envoy realm.

Wait, I feel like I’ve forgotten something… Lu Yin looked around for a moment before his eyes locked onto the tree that had trapped the Second Nightking. Lu Yin instantly disappeared, and when he reappeared, he was next to the broken tree.

Despite being shattered, Lu Yin could see that this tree was no different from the Mother Tree. His eyes completely lit up. Just how many microarrays would they be able to produce from such a large tree? Again, Lu Yin became short of breath, as he was not looking at potentially dozens or even hundreds of microarrays, but tens of thousands at the very least!

He felt as though he could already envision himself leading the Lu Elite Troops and watching the soldiers release the attacks stored in the microarrays to cause tens of thousands of Enlighter level attacks to sweep through space.

While even tens of thousands of Enlighter-level attacks would not be able to do anything to an Envoy, that was only when one considered pure destructive power. If the top experts on each side of a battle kept each other restrained, then tens of thousands of Enlighter-level attacks were almost guaranteed to determine the victor of a war.

Regardless of how powerful an individual person might become, they remained an individual. While an individual might be able to become invincible, wanting to conquer an entire civilization by themself would always remain impossible for an individual.

This was also just the beginning. Once there were tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of microarrays, Lu Yin was confident that he could obtain victory even if he led his army against the Aeternals on the battlefield behind the Mother Tree in the Perennial World.

Lu Yin immediately reached out to Aurora Enterprises to ask them to send someone to Shamrock Enterprise’s hidden world to collect the broken tree.

When Director Zhi saw the image of the shattered tree, he was no less excited than Lu Yin. Even though Aurora Enterprises had already agreed to produce microarrays for Lu Yin and also for his newly designed universal armor, they were still entitled to keep a portion of the materials that they were given.

Those materials were crucial for their ongoing research.

Even after hearing the truth about the Mother Tree, Director Zhi had not stopped researching and searching for a material that could replace the Mother Tree as the core component of the microarrays.

Lu Yin stared at Sapling and stroked his chin. If this guy was also a Mother Tree and had grown this big, then its branches should also be a suitable material to produce some microarrays with!

It was impossible to know if Sapling somehow picked up on Lu Yin's dangerous thoughts, but Sapling suddenly shrank back down until it was the same size that it had been when it first sprouted. It then leaped up and jumped onto Lu Yin's shoulder, acting very happy.

Lu Yin marveled, "Even after absorbing so much, it still hasn't changed at all?"

Sapling acted very happily as it bounced and jumped about. Its green leaves took on a brighter and verdant hue, and just looking at the moving plant gave people a feeling of comfort.

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